


The Number One Cause of Death Among Slayers

by ProtoNeoRomantic



Series: Patch Works [38]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: And You'll Be Stopping Me How?, Anger, Arguing, Background Het, Couple fighting, Cruciamentum, Duh(!), Gen, Graphically refenced violence, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Married Couple, Protectiveness, Scary Horrible Watchers, Snark, Spike must die, Take the fight to the enemy!, What would Buffy do?, monster sarcasm rally, paternalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2015-05-22
Packaged: 2018-03-31 18:09:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3987757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/ProtoNeoRomantic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Buffy learns that Spike is on the loose in Paris with a growing gang of vampires, Giles tries to talk her out of going to confront him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Number One Cause of Death Among Slayers

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Whose Line is it Anyway?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3120551) by [ProtoNeoRomantic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/ProtoNeoRomantic). 



“Spike,” Buffy concluded bitterly.

“Spike,” her husband agreed darkly. Joyce nodded.

“Is that bad?” Mitzie asked nervously, apparently the only person at the table besides Hank to which the name meant nothing.

“For him,” Buffy said glibly; grim, self-satisfied amusement stretched tight over seething fury. There was a hard glint in her eye that Giles knew much too well and that Joyce was getting to know quickly. They exchanged an uneasy look. Mitzie looked uneasily at Hank.

“Buffy,” Giles began to lecture, half warning and half pleading, “lets don't rush—”

“What?” Buffy demanded angrily, “Let's don't what? What am I doing?”

“Well...” Giles hesitated, “you just seemed to be getting...”

“Ready to do my job?” Buffy countered crisply.

“Need I remind you that you are still only free on bond?” Giles reminded her condescendingly.

“Need I remind  _you_ ,” Buffy fiercely snarked back, “that Spike murdered Kendra! In front of Willow. Like thirty seconds before he sexually assaulted her with the body still hanging in front of her.”

“Holy shit!” Hank gasped. Mitzie's eyes were wide as saucers. She held on to the table with one hand, looking like she might pass out. Joyce looked a little green around the gills as well, though she'd known some part of that already if she'd thought about it.

“You can't go to Paris, if you wanted to,” Giles argued. “You haven't got your passport.”

“And how is that Wesley guy getting to Afghanistan?” Buffy challenged. “What was it you said about the dark art of bureaucracy?”

“Wh—how did you here about Afghanistan?” Giles wanted to know. “Even I'm not supposed to know that.

“Robson's telling, like, everybody,” Buffy informed him. “Not just you. Mildred overheard him talking to her mom about it, what a shame it was, and anyway, don't change the subject, which is that I need to kill Spike and the Council  _could_ get me to Paris and back if they wanted to.” 

“Look... let's just... discuss this in private. After lunch,” Giles retacked, flustered. That drew a fresh round of objection from Hank, but Buffy and Giles once again paid him no mind. The meal was finished in a predominance of hear-the-forks-scrape-the-plates silence, vaguely punctuated by Joyce and Mitzie's desultory, feeble attempts at polite conversation.

In private, after lunch, after their three guests had been prevailed upon to take a suite of adjoining rooms that would temporarily become part of their current 'home' within hotel and over which their invitation control and general protection would therefore reign, as soon, in fact as they had gone to unpack, Giles planted himself on the green sofa and warned Buffy quietly, tensely, “Do not go to Paris.”

“But Spike—!” she began to object, angrily.

“Is the leading cause of death among Slayers this century!” Giles snapped back at her, at least as angrily. His anger was not dulled but sharpened by the dreadful realization that caught up to his unthinking tongue a moment later. That wasn't the truth. Spike was only the second leading cause of Slayer death. Number one on the list was still, ever and always the Council.

 


End file.
